A discussion of all things Lakewood and East Dallas from Advocate Magazines

Media

Oct 22, 2008

Bad news about the economy and school district layoff woes is a downer in any case. But, it always hurts worse to hear the personal stories because, let’s face it, losing your job especially if you have a family to support is a scary scary thing. And it seems more real when you see and hear from those who suffered a direct hit. (And I know many of you reading are personally struggling as a result of this thing — I hear folks talking about it in line at the grocery store and in the stands at the kids’ sports games.)

This morning I was listening to KERA’s report about the job fair held yesterday for DISD casualties. Reporter BJ Austin interviewed the former assistant principal from neighborhood high school Bryan Adams, who was recruited from the classroom into his administrative position before getting pink slipped last week. Vega, the father of three, said his wife took it harder than he did, and when Austin asked Vega if he’d like to say anything to his wife, Vega responded that he’d like her to stop crying. Yeah, these are the stories going on all around the district. Ouch.

Oct 21, 2008

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• The renovations at the Lovers Lane Central Market are mostly done, and the store should be back to normal by the end of the month or the beginning of November. The remodeled cafe is set to open Oct. 31.

• And who says social networking isn’t dangerous? An English husband murdered his estranged wife after she changed her Facebook listing to say she was single. The BBC reports that the man was drunk and high on cocaine, and that he beat her, tore out clumps of her hair, and repeatedly stabbed her in the head and neck.

• If you’ve noticed that there aren’t as many ads for credit cards on TV, you’re right. Television ad spending declined 24 percent in the first three weeks of September from a year earlier, after rising almost 27 percent the previous two months, according to the Nielsen Co.

• Even those of us who preferred the Temptations will miss Levi Stubbs, the lead singer for the Four Tops. He died last week at the age of 72 after a series of illnesses dating to 2000. The Four Tops were the Temps’ great rival during Motown’s heyday in the 1960s and early 1970s. But the Four Tops never stopped performing, including this, from Sesame Street in the 1980s, and courtesy of YouTube. You can’t beat that choreography.

Oct 20, 2008

I’ve heard over the past couple weeks, a lot of complaining — from neighbors, readers, etc. — about the Dallas Morning News supplement, The Briefing.
Yeah, they are littering my street, too. At least one of my neighbors
has opted not to pick them up at all — he now has a damp yellow-y black
and white mound growing on his home’s otherwise pristine façade. Others
have simply tossed the papers curbside, incorporating them into a pre
bulk-trash pick up pile.

I can’t complain. I’ve worked for a couple publications that either
launch unsolicited papers into people’s yards, or hang ‘em on their
doors ... and I believe those to be, all-in-all, good products that the
community enjoys.

That said, I of course I checked out The Briefing, and I
think it is actually a pretty good idea. But hey, I once declared
Cliff’s Notes “the greatest creation of all time”. And that’s basically
what The Briefing is — quick hits and highlights from Dallas’
daily newspaper. It's small, tight and neat with no story jumps — very
user friendly. (Hold conversations with friends, colleagues and
teachers as if you actually read the real newspaper before work this morning!)

If you see something that piques your interest, you can go online and get more … or, feasibly, pick up a DMN paper and get more.

I have plenty of bones to pick with the DMN, but this isn’t one of them. The DMN
is like the current Dallas Cowboys team, in a way — flailing about,
trying not do die and taking a beating from the public in the process.
They are looking for something, ANYTHING, to breathe life back into
their organization, and hoping that something sticks. Only I don’t
think they anticipated that so many would be sticking in towering piles
to neighborhood driveways.

By the way, if you hate The Briefing, call 214-977-8333 to cancel delivery to your home.

Oct 19, 2008

Now that the dust has settled a bit on the DISD teacher layoffs (and I say "a bit" rather tentatively because I know this sore spot will linger quite awhile), it's time to figure out where we go from here.

Hinojosa says he won't resign. The few school board members who want to get rid of him don't have enough votes to make that happen. The Texas Education Agency isn't going to ride to the rescue. Neither is Mayor Tom Leppert, the self-proclaimed education mayor whose only public comment that I've seen on this mess is along the lines of "they need to get this thing cleaned up" — thanks for really digging in and helping during DISD's time of need, by the way.

So there's no savior on the horizon. We have a lot of angry teachers and parents. The media isn't going to let up on DISD, but they probably don't have too many investigative rabbits left to pull out of that hat, either. So if ever the words "winter of our discontent" resonated, that's what we're looking at for the rest of this school year.

Oct 17, 2008

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Early voting for the November election begins Monday. You can find out where to vote here (complete with a Google map link, as the Dallas County elections department goes high tech). Early voting has already started in several states, with mixed turnout.

• Entertainment Weekly takes on the spring 2009 Star Trek XI movie. Says the director, Lost’s J.J. Abrams: “We weren't making a movie for fans of Star Trek, we were making a movie for fans of movies.” Some interesting stuff, if you don’t mind some truly annoying writing. The studio trailer is here.

• In the wake of yesterday’s Lakewood-area shooting, the FBI says the number of justifiable homicides committed by police and private citizens has been rising in the past two years to their highest levels in more than a decade. Says one expert: “Clearly there is a message out there that citizens may be able to defend themselves.”

• So much for Tarrant County homeowners striking it rich by selling their property’s mineral rights. Gas producers have stopped trying to lease land and are cutting bonus offers in the Barnett Shale, thanks to lower natural gas prices and the credit crunch. One man saw his bonus drop from $142,500 to $5,000.

Oct 14, 2008

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Channel 8’s 10 p.m. newscast mysteriously vanished Saturday night, reports UncleBarky.com. It started late because of an auto race, didn’t have any audio, and then disappeared, replaced by Entertainment Tonight. A station official said an audio board stopped working, and the backup audio board didn’t kick in.

• One of the oldest miniature golf courses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area will close after 40 years in business. The Putt-Putt course on East Division in Arlington held its final tournament over the weekend. Said one long-time golfer: “Back in the early ’70s, Putt-Putt is what you did as a kid. Kids today are more interested in technology. But when I was 12 years old, I pretty much lived at Arlington Division. I can still hear Saturday in the Park by Chicago.”

• An Argentine publicist uses bicycles to gauge crime, leaving an unchained bike in certain neighborhoods to see how long it takes for the bike to be stolen. His theory? The longer it takes, the safer the area. He records the bikes a using hidden camera, and posts the videos on the Internet. Sounds like something we should do here on the blog, doesn’t it?

• A 106-year-old American nun, who hasn’t voted for president since 1952, says she’s going to vote for Barak Obama. Sister Cecilia Gaudette, who lives in a convent in Rome, voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. In the interest of fairness, if anyone knows any 106-year-old nuns who are going to vote for John McCain, let me know and we’ll put it on the blog.

Go figure –- the stock market went up almost 1,000 points yesterday, a record, and the parent company of Dallas’ Only Daily newspaper lost almost 11 percent. If that’s not enough to roil the 401K of the remaining Belo employees, volume was very heavy, about one-half more than normal. This usually means something is up.

Belo is releasing its third-quarter results in two weeks or so. Have investors already decided the news will be bad and are selling ahead of the earnings?

Yet, no matter how bad those numbers are, they can’t be that bad. For one thing, Belo has no debt. For another, the stock is paying 12 percent in dividends. For a third, if the bosses liquidated the company tomorrow, it would probably be worth more than its market capitalization. The real estate that the News’ building sits on downtown is listed on the tax rolls at $28.2 million, which means it could be worth twice that. And none of this takes into account the possibility that management will take the company private next year.

Hey, even I see an opportunity here, and I’m just a middle-aged ex-sportswriter. It’s time to buy Belo stock, and I’ll probably get 100 shares later today. Of course, this raises the question of whether I’ll have to add one of those disclaimers –- Jeff Siegel owns shares in A.H. Belo -– whenever I write about The News.

Oct 10, 2008

A regular roundup of stuff that wouldn’t necessarily make it on the blog, but is worth noting:

• Just in time for Texas-OU weekend: The University of Texas is the 70th best college in the world, according to a survey from an international education network, QS Quacquarelli Symonds. Oklahoma isn’t ranked among the top 200. But before the Orangebloods get too cocky, know that UT dropped from a tie for 51st last year, and is ranked behind the University of Wisconsin in this year’s survey. Harvard and Yale are first and second for the second consecutive year. (Note to Northwestern alumni club: NU is 33, down from 29 last year).

• High gas prices are hurting police departments, too. Traditionally, cops have driven cars like the Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor, which has a powerful engine annd big back seats for stashing people who get arrested. But rising fuel prices mean more departments are using hybrids and smaller more fuel-efficient cars.

• Park Cities, get ready for the Bushes. Sources are reporting that Laura Bush wants to move back to Highland Park when the president’s term is up in January. “It’s her turn,” said a Texas member of the House with knowledge of the move who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He wanted the ranch. She wants a home in Dallas.”

• I even got one of these –- an email telling me my bank had been sold and I needed to send financial information to the new owners. In fact, federal authorities say scammers posing as the new owners of banks or the federal agencies charged with oversight of failed banks are phishing for account information. Which is pretty despicable, even for people who perpetuate Internet fraud.

Oct 09, 2008

Dallas’ Only Daily Newspaper gets its share of criticism in these cyber-pages, but we try to be constructive. Everyone knows how much trouble The News and its parent, A.H. Belo, are in — sinking stock price, plunging revenues, layoffs and even dropping comic strips (predicted here in December, if I may be so bold). So the last thing Belo needs to do is to shoot itself in the foot.

But that’s what happened the other day in Quick, Belo’s tabloid aimed at younger people who don’t read newspapers. A humor columnist named Alibaster K. Abthernabther (which I’m told is a pen name for a real person) wrote a piece about having sex with Big Tex. At least that’s what I think it was about, because I’m not young and hip enough to understand the humor. Or at least that’s the explanation Quick editor Rob Clark is giving to some readers who have complained.

Oct 07, 2008

A friend pointed out to me this snide bit in October's D Magazine — it's an open letter from editor (and apparently, neighbor) Zac Crain to the White Rock Lake Area cyclists who make his favorite 7-11 oh so inconvenient for him. His wordy, albeit entertaining, note basically asks all you sweaty cycling enthusiasts to please stop converging at his 7-11 because he thinks you're kind-a icky ... and you make him feel guilty about his early morning cigarette-coffee purchases. He also uses a lot of big words to make fun of your clothes. Funny, as long as you aren't one of those who takes yourself too seriously.